Eighty Mile Beach (By Simon)

Initially we had planned to stop at Eighty Mile Beach for a short 1 or 2 day stop-over on the long drive to Broome but after just 1 day we decided to extend and stayed for 4 days. The camp site was 13km off the highway down a dirt road and was situated just behind the sand dunes with grassed camp sites and plenty of large trees (including Liz's new favourite tree... Frangipani's) for shade.

For a young family there are two main activities at Eighty Mile Beach... fishing and shell collecting  although it seems the Grey Nomads who make up 99% of the tenants indulge in a few others like talking, sleeping and more talking! You may ask why swimming is not on the list at such a beautiful beach and the reason is sharks and sea snakes of which we saw plenty!

Anyway, our family loves both fishing and shell collecting although based on the take home results we are a lot better at the latter!

Fishing was best in the afternoon so our mornings were spent driving up the beach stopping numerous times to inspect and collect shells.

 

The shells were spectacular and stretched up and down the beach for miles. In addition to shells we came across dozens of cone shaped sponges which doubled as hats!

We met another young family from Victoria who joined us driving on the beach and introduced us to Mud Crabs... yum!

While driving on the beach Nath took the opportunity to take a driving lesson.

Afternoons were spent fishing. As mentioned we are not the best fishermen but you can't help but enjoy it in a location like this.

We ended up catching four Blue Thredfin Salmon (kept one) and a one shark which Liz caught with her bare hands!! As it happens we were fishing and all of a sudden a 1/2 metre shark flew out of the water and lay thrashing on the beach. Liz and the kids ran up the beach and Liz picked it up by the tail and there you have it... dinner! Talking to some other fisherman they think it may have been chased into the shallows by some bigger sharks.

Time seemed to stand still at Eighty Mile Beach as our time there seemed longer than 4 days. On leaving we all felt very relaxed and blessed to have stayed at such a wonderful place.